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Thoughts from our staff: Ray Rice incident

September 22, 2014

The Ray Rice scandal is one of many domestic violence cases plaguing the NFL over the past year. Since the start of the 2014-15 season, there have been thirteen accounts of domestic violence or assault on an active NFL player.

Unfortunately, this has been a common trend over the past decade. However, this trend consistently increases due to a lack of action from not only the Commissioner’s office, but also the individual teams. Coaches today tend to not take an authoritative position of power over their players off the field; they let the League handle the dirty work, and they handle the plays on the field. The coaches of any sports team, whether in youth, high school, or college leagues, takes responsibility for their team on and off the field. Why is this not the same in a professional league, where the young hometown football players look up to the players? The NFL today needs to take a stance of proactive policies and rules that better regulate and enforce their current reactive guidelines. –Peter Swain, Contributor

With all the allegations that have occurred this year in the NFL it is hard to say which incident was the worst. The incident between Ray Rice and his current wife Janay Rice has been blown up by the media this past month after the shocking video of Ray physically abusing his wife was leaked. To my knowledge the NFL had access to the video at first before it was displayed for the public, and did not attempt to react until the public views were stated on social media. Personally, I feel that the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should have cracked down on a sentence for Rice right away before stalling to hear about what the “world” had to say. With that said though, if seen, the extended video shows Janay physically abusing Ray before they had gone into the elevator. Now I realize that Ray should have kept his cool and not retaliated in that manner, but Janay was clearly not revealing her “lady-like” presence by hitting Ray and fueling his fire. The fact that Ray’s sentence was reduced after sending letters to court, also brings a lot of attention to if this is legally fair. At the end of the day Ray Rice was clearly in the wrong for his actions and I believe that he probably realizes this, but the NFL needs to send out a message asap to their players on making better decisions and thinking first before they speak or act. As for Janay, who’s to say whether true love or the greed for money has kept her together with Ray. –Christian Strong, Sports Editor

The Ray Rice incident has been floating around in the news for the past few weeks. I find this particularly interesting because it is not overly common for sports news to cross into breaking news- unless it has to do with player violence. If anything, I am glad that this incident has brought more focus on the issues of domestic violence toward both men and women. –Desiree DeClaudio, Managing Editor